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Thursday, April 28, 2016

The Next Big Thing

Last week, Abby was at feeding therapy when we saw our awesome feeding GI (yes, she has two GIs!). He knows about Abby's surgery series, so he asked, "When is the next big thing?" Knowing exactly what he meant, I filled him in on this upcoming surgery that's now less than a month away.

Since then, I've thought a lot about the phrase "The next big thing." Given that our life tends to revolve around surgeries and appointments, it is easy to get sucked into focusing on the next surgery. It's bad enough for me to do it (which means very little sleep leading up to surgery!), but it's just not healthy for my kids to dwell so much on surgeries.

In the year leading up to our Make a Wish trip, we often focused on trip planning to keep our mind off of Abby's five surgeries that year. I decided tonight that we needed to focus our minds on things we are looking forward to, rather than the surgery we are all dreading.

So, the kids and I sat down together tonight and made a list of "The Next Big Thing!"

You probably can't see the list very well, but they range from cousins' soccer games, to school musicals, to field day, to the last day of school. I included the date of each one and we will cross it off as we reach it. If we have a big event we are looking forward to (like our Kings Dominion trip last weekend), I might list it by itself.

The next three weeks are filled with lots of fun, exciting things before surgery. So we are choosing joy and focusing on The Next Big Thing!